I was brainstorming with a friend the other day about her teenage son, who is totally out of control. He’s drinking, he’s smoking pot and may be doing even worse. Because I am not a parent, I couldn’t fault her parenting, but I did think of some different strategies that she could use to deal with him.

IF your teenager is:

Drinking: Keep fake alcohol in the refrigerator. Water down the booze and wine. Buy near-beer. Trick him into thinking he is getting drunk.

Smoking pot: Steal his weed. This mom in question said she could sniff out his weed in all his “secret” places like nobody’s business. Why shouldn’t she just confiscate it and replace it with oregano so that he will look stupid in front of his friends?

Using more serious drugs: Find out who is selling him the drugs. The person is probably not a teenager and may be corrupting him in other ways, if in fact he is using harder drugs. Find the true source of the problem and find out the options. The punishment for dealing drugs to a minor is probably much stiffer in a majority of states than the penalty for a minor using the drugs.

I have no idea if any of these strategies will work as I have never had to try them, but I have other ideas, too.

Make the punishments tough and enforce them. Marijuana is non-addictive, but is definitely not helpful for teenagers who are saying they are doing their homework, but aren’t.

Keep him busy. The person I talked to had employed this strategy a bit. My strategy would be to force the teenager to get a job like many other American teenagers do. If he is working at a fast food restaurant, you can easily stop by and make sure he is there. If he is working at his dad’s office, you will definitely know where he is.

Do not believe him. Teenagers lie all the time to keep from getting into trouble. They will blame innocent people.

Remember that you are smarter than he is by about a million times because his tiny brain is still mush.

Get his friends on your side. Many teenagers are strongly anti-drugs. If your teenager has made “new friends,” try to get in contact with his old friends. Reminding him that his “new friends” are not really his friends probably won't work, but it might.

My daughter has finally done it. She has asked for her first pet. She told me the other day that she wants a hamster or rat for her birthday. I actually had a rat about a year ago that she named Pet, but them she accidentally let him go when she was trying to feed him a piece of her hamburger. Pet still pops up every once in a while. Like yesterday for instance, I baked cookies and set them on the top of the stove to cool. Next thing I knew, I looked in there only to see Pet sitting on the cookie sheet eating a cookie. He was too young when he got out to be properly hand trained, so he just runs now when we get near him.

Anyway, I got off subject. So, she wants some sort of animal for her birthday. I can’t decide what to get her. If your children watch the show BG then you know who George the hamster is. Well, she seems to think that all hamsters are like George. She thinks you can just carry them around and they will sit and play with you all day. I tried to tell her that is not the case. I am trying to talk her into either a guinea pig or a rat, only because they are the calmest and friendliest.

I have never owned a ferret, so I don’t know how they would work for smaller children. I have owned rabbits and loved them. What is your opinion? Have your children owned any great pets?

Let me start by saying that I am a huge tomboy. I always have been. I enjoyed climbing trees, catching new pets, and hunting whitetail deer with a bow when I was a child. I have never worn makeup or gotten my eyebrows done. It is just not my cup of tea. Unfortunately, my daughter doesn’t share the same love for nature that I do. She enjoys dressing up, getting her hair done, and strutting her stuff. Recently, she saw a child pageant on TV and has been begging me to let her do one ever since. Mind you, she is only three years old.

What do you think? Should I just accept the fact that she is the complete opposite of me and let her do it? I would never let her do one of the so called, “full glitz” pageants. In those, the little kids wear full makeup, fake teeth, and fake hair. I did, however, find a local pageant that says it caters to novice children and is all natural. Would you let your child do it? I am afraid that she will either love it and want to do more, or hate it and freeze up on stage. After all, while she doesn’t share my love for all things dirty, she does share my shyness. Mine is actually more than shyness, it is full blown social phobia. I have suffered with it for years.

After re-reading that, I am afraid that my phobia is going to hold my child back in life. I don’t drive, out of fear, so she already misses out on many things that mothers who do drive can provide. Most days are spent in the apartment, painting or doing other crafts. I suppose that I should allow her to do this. I am not going to let my fears keep my little girls from doing the things she wants to. Now to find the money to buy those outrageously priced pageant outfits…..

I will probably catch a lot of backlash for this, but here goes. When my daughter is sick, my job seems so much easier. She loves to cuddle, sleeps all the time, and gives me the biggest smile ever. I really hope I am not the only parent out there that feels this way! What is it about a sick kid that melts my heart? I don’t know if it is the fact that she really acts better, or if I just feel sorry for her and will put up with more.

Anyway, this last week she had been so sick that she mostly stayed in bed all day. I was able to get so much done! Housework, actual work, and spending time with her brother all seemed so easy. I even took the time to bake cookies and clean the carpets. I did, of course, take her to the doctor and they advised me that it was viral and it would have to run its course. Her father and I were talking last night about how good she has been lately, and then I realized she hasn’t necessarily been good, just asleep. Of course, she woke up today feeling much better and screaming at me because we were out of chocolate milk. Well, it couldn’t last forever I suppose.

Now it seems that she has transferred her illness to her brother. While a three year old is peaceful and sleepy when sick, a two month old is the opposite! No sleeping, just screaming constantly. I feel so sorry for him because he can’t tell me what hurts, but at the same time I am running thin. Yesterday I honestly felt like I was going to lose my mind. I sat on the couch laughing hysterically for no reason. Please tell me I am not the only one that occasionally loses my mind at random times throughout the day? All work from home moms go through this right?

I have never been one of the mothers that follows all of the trends. I didn’t read my daughter books about potty training, I just potty trained her. Honestly, I have never even owned a book on parenting. If I need advice about either of my children I do one of two things – Google or ask family. Unfortunately, I may have to redesign my parenting tactics. I stumbled upon something that has made a huge difference in the interaction between my daughter and I.

The history of how I stumbled upon this is pretty typical. My daughter was an unruly three year old. She talked back, yelled, and made the most irritating faces I have ever seen. Nothing seemed to work to get her to calm down. I tried being the nicest person ever, being the meanest person ever, and (gasp) even spanking her bottom. Nothing got through to her. She continued on with her same routine. After exhausting all other options I decided to research what other parents were doing. I even went as far as to try Dr. Karp’s “Happiest Toddler on the Block” techniques. I ended up having an unruly toddler that was now laughing at me.

So, what finally worked? Surprising as it is, what finally worked was the time tested “stars on the calendar” approach. I modified it of course, to fit my needs. First, I took everything out of her room except her bed and blanket. I mean no TV, no radio, no games. I did leave her books and crayons in there. Next, I wrote down all of her rules and consequences on paper and taped it to the wall at her level. She cannot read, but this step really intrigued her. She asked me to read them over and over. Lastly, I told her that if she was good she would get a star on the calendar for the day. At the end of the month, if she had more stars than x’s, she would get to go to Chuck E Cheese.

For the past three weeks my daughter has been so well behaved. She uses her manners and respects adults. I am so sorry I didn’t try this sooner! She now takes pride in looking at her calendar every night to see if she earned a star.

Now that I have a newborn, I am finding that it is impossible to get any sleep. My daughter, who is three, has gotten in the bad habit of staying up until 2am so she can watch the “cartoons” that come on. I try my hardest to stay awake with her to prevent her from watching these rated R shows that target children, however, I usually end up passed out on the couch.

Once I am sleeping, she raids the refrigerator, trashes the house, and ends up asleep on the living room floor with her pillow pet and favorite blanket. This child has everything she could ever want in her bedroom. She has a TV, DVD player, radio, and an endless supply of toys. I even had my father make her a princess bed and bought her a matching comforter set.

My son is almost three months old and is sleeping pretty well at night, but he wakes up early. This means that if I stay up until 2am with my daughter I get maybe 4 ½ hours of sleep a night. This is not working for me.

She started this when her brother came home from the NICU, so I am thinking that she sees those few hours at night as just mommy and daughter time. I understand this, but I cannot keep it up. I have been trying to spend more quality time with her during the day when her daddy is at work, but her brother has to eat every three hours and requires a lot of attention in between feedings.

I have thought about waking her up early so that she will go to bed earlier or keeping her brother awake longer at night so he will sleep later. I have tried lying in her bed with her until she falls asleep, but I always fall asleep first. If you have any advice to help me through this phase of raising two children please share!

So the holiday vacation is officially over for my daughter and now she is back in school. I must admit that at first, I was a little relieved to get a small break from having to get her ready and making sure that she made it to school everyday. But, after about four days of her being at home, I was ready for her to go back to school. She was starting to get on my nerves.

As stressful and time consuming as it is transporting children to school, it is a necessary evil that we all have to tackle when we become parents. I am beginning to question how parents can have their children absent for a huge amount of days and go stir crazy. School gives children an outlet to burn off their excessive energy, learn and educate themselves and socialize. Take that away from and you are starting to raise disrespectful and smart mouthed children; behavior that I noticed from my daughter during her two week vacation.

I guess I better start wishing for some of the warm weather we had before winter finally decided to show up. While it may be darn near impossible to catch me outside when the weather is below 30 degrees, unless I am running to my car. I have a remote starter so I do not get into it until it is warm. The school system apparently does not below that below 30 degrees too cold to send my child outside for recess. This is just a rant about a couple of things that have irked me this past week. I love my child but I hate the brat I created inside of her.

It’s the New Years Eve and one of the things I absolutely hate about being a parent is in order for me to go out and party, I have to hire a babysitter. Do you know how hard it is to find a babysitter for New Year's Eve? I've been looking for weeks and still can't find anyone who is not planning on partying themselves so they can watch my child. I guess this is another year where I will be sitting at home, watching some kiddie movies eating, popcorn and drinking grape juice to ring in midnight.

This makes me feel older beyond my years. I am only 29 years old and my daughter who is 11 loves it. She says I'm boring and I never go out, but what she seems to ignore is the fact that I will not leave her unattended anywhere especially at home. She is in the phase where she knows everything and you can't tell her anything. Now that she has received her phone with the mp3 player for Christmas, she all of a sudden can't hear either.

I hope that since we are spending the last day of the year together, that we can start 2012 fresh. By fresh I mean a complete check on her attitudes and mood swings. Maybe a bit more resemblance to the child I know I have raised, instead of the stranger I seem to see more and more of everyday. I guess this is just the growing pains of a tween and the strain it puts on her relationship with her mother.

Let me be the first to admit that originally I was not happy to see my daughter's Christmas list this year. I mean, I was happy to see that she obviously does not consider us broke but disturbed as well. There were items on there ranging from lip gloss and Monster High dolls to the iPad. How do you go from something that costs a few dollars to the iPad? I don’t even own one so why does she think she will be the first in my household to get one?

I actually got quite a few laughs after reading her list. I was also presented with some food for thought from my friends and family. They said that although my daughter's list showed that she does indeed consider us very fortunate as far as finances it also shows that she feels secure and she feels confident that she will get those items. That is something I never really thought about until then. I thought she just put what she saw on TV or in the paper on a list. Who knew that a child's Christmas list is a very good barometer as to how they feel about their home environment. I am by no means rich or even considered middle class as far as income; I however do work several jobs so that she doesn’t have to feel the sting of being in a lower income bracket. Apparently I have been doing a great job. Good job mom!

When I compared her list to those who are not as fortunate as I am, like the children of the family I adopted for Christmas, I see that there is a very big difference in items on their lists. The most expensive things were clothes and shoes. All in all, it was a very humbling and enlightening experience to once again be reminded that children see it all and are the best indicators of how well off we truly are.

Every year I start the holiday season off by being in full Grinch mode. Is it just me or does it seem like the holidays seem to bring out the best and the worst in our kids? Have you noticed that all of a sudden your child starts to act like the perfect angel that you feel they should be year round. And as much as you enjoy your child's new found sense of citizenship, you can't help but feel slightly pissed that it's because they want you to spend all of your money and soul to make them happy materialistically. News flash- Christmas is not where I am going to be a sucker this year and spend all of my money just so my child will adore me when in all actuality, she should be appreciative of the fact that I work to keep a roof over her head, food in her mouth and clothes on her back.

I know I may sound a bit bitter, but really I'm not. I just want to feel slightly appreciated for all of my hard work and sacrifices that I make all the other 364 days out the year without feeling like I'm buttered up. Yet, I can't help but fall into the trap of wanting to see the joy on my child's face on Christmas morning once she tears the wrapping paper off of her gifts. God forbid I get her something she didn’t want and then I'm left with the feeling that I wasted my money on a spoiled brat. Of course, I am the reason the child became a brat in the first place.